21st century heathen

Well our team could be left in tatters. Tom, Ash and Bren have all been involved in crashes at BV tonight (so have Armo, Kyle and Darryl ). (check out the Updates for more because frankly if I post it here I doubt anyone would believe me!) http://speedwayupdates.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=bvc&action=display&thread=8396&page=1 On the plus side Rich did practice after the meeting at Monmore last night. He did quite a number of laps. Hopefully he suffered no ill-effects today so he should be available to ride if needed. I await news on our boys from both a club and country perspective.

I sincerely hope the BSPA launch an inquiry into what's happened tonight. And if the Heathens are found at fault for some riders not taking their place in races then so-be-it. But it seems clear the track was in a poor state and that the meeting only went on long enough to get a result. It was stated on Updates that there was a 10pm curfew but they raced on until nearly half past and then called it off after 12 heats due to the curfew. What price riders' safety?

Well that comment jinxed it!!!

Obviously as a Heathens' fan I'm happy to see a strong representation of our riders taking part (my uncle actually said to me yesterday he was going to try to get out there to see Dudley take on the rest of the world ). It's not the strongest team we could have tracked in terms of looking at names on a piece of paper. But for whatever reasons certain individuals won't be there so I hope our boys (by which I mean Brits) get the fans' support irrespective of club loyalties.

Keep checking the International forum. There's already a thread in there with the (Aus) summer schedule for Pinjar, WA. I was fortunate enough to take in a meeting there last year and can recommend it. That tiny little track, which I'm sure had Kangaroo poo mixed in, is something to behold, especially when you see 1000cc side cars tearing around it!! http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showforum=9

Yes, both Johnson and Bates were off 15m in heat 14. The above wouldn't apply because it was two different riders from two different teams for two different offences. *edit* Apologies I misread the above. It does appear that Newport should not have been allowed to put Bates back in off 15m. The only option should have been to put the reserve in. However, he was both injured and had been replaced in the heat too so he wouldn't have been allowed in even if fit to ride. Newport should have only had three riders. Ultimately it didn't matter as Bates finished last anyway. In the original staging of the heat it seemed to me that both Heathens were a bit too sharp from the tapes for the ref's liking. Neither touched the tapes and neither appeared to be rolling as such, but they were both on the move before the visitors realised what was going on. The heat was stopped and an unsatisfactory start was cited as the reason. Neither rider were warned. In the re-run it looked as though Johnson's clutch was dragging as he was trying to hold the bike back and got to the point he just had to let the clutch lever out a touch and the bike moved forward slightly. As he pulled the clutch lever in again and stopped moving the tapes rose and he missed the start. He was clearly last away from the tapes but the ref stopped the heat again and discluded Johnson for delaying the start even though he hadn't touched the tapes and hadn't received a warning. Frankly a ridiculous decision as the ref was delaying the meeting when he could have easily let the heat go with Johnson having penalised himself. As Johnson had replaced Portwood in the heat the only option was to put Johnson back in off a 15m handicap. The 2min warning was put on straight away for the next re-run. Bates was not at the tapes when the 2 min light went out so the ref discluded him too. He was also put back in off a 15m handicap. It meant that Johnson, who had been moved to gate 4 initially, had to move across one to gate 3 off 15m so that Bates could start from the outside otherwise there wouldn't have been a gate between the team partners.

I wouldn't be so sure about it being a walk in the park for the Heathens. I'm more than a little nervous at the moment. Jon's form has dipped a little, Darryl moves into the top 5 (surely that wasn't in the pre-season plan of action?!) and we have two riders making their debut at reserve tonight. We desperately need Jon back to his very best, the Ash/Tom partnership to have its best night of the season and Kyle to continue his cracking form because we could easily have a very long tail tonight. With a lot of action in recent days and during the rest of this week the table could have a very different look about it in the metaphorical blink of an eye. The Stoke meetings were a real disappointment so we need to bounce back stronger than ever in the league this week to restore confidence and lay the foundations for a big push in the second half of the season. We do have home meetings in hand but it will be a wasted opportunity to put the pressure on if we start catching up tonight with anything other than all three league points. 'Ommer Um'

Good news for our boys. It's all extra experience and raising the bar all the time. Oh, and one to ponder for all those that have had a pop at the Heathens regarding the NL being a league for young Brits.

Nothing much to add at the moment. I'll link at the bottom to the webpage but as I say there's not much there but an advert. I would expect to see all the Heathens riders in the line-up, plus our injured boys (Roynon and Franklin) are both targeting it as a comeback date I believe. I'd have thought Lambert, the current holder, will be invited to defend it and I would be surprised if the rider the Heathens' fans love to hate the most in the NL, Mr Garrity, is not invited too. I hope to see Pickard and the Baseby lads and as I type I think Evans (had a stint with us last season) will get an invite. That doesn't leave many places open but it would be nice to see Chessell and Stoneman at least line up as meeting reserves, perhaps Sarjeant too. I'm not sure if I missed out an obvious names there. It'll be interesting to see how many I've got right. http://www.dudleyheathens.co/goldenhammer.php

That's a shame. A late shower too much I guess. Oh well, do we get ½ a point for winning the toss?

No. No. ------------------------------- Line ups from the club website. ISLE OF WIGHT: Nick Simmons, Gary Cottham, Danny Warwick, Rob Smith, Paul Starke, Charlie Saunders, Luke Chessell. HEATHENS: Jon Armstrong, Darryl Ritchings, Tom Perry, Ashley Morris, Kyle Newman, Adam Portwood, Brendan Johnson.

Some of our lads have now done enough meetings to get a new average. One of whom is Darryl. His new average is higher than Brendan's so I assume it will be Darryl at 2 and Brendan at 6. I really don't know what to expect from our new look line-up so I certainly won't be making any bold predictions, especially in light of our recent struggles against Stoke. It would be good for confidence to grab something on the road again though. Hopefully that would set us up to go on another run.

We can't. He needs a storming second half to the season again or he's out on his ear and there's nobody to take his place. ------------------------------ But before people start to slate him and the other Brits too much just take a look at the qualifiers again. How many nations have got a load of youngsters coming through? Most of the qualifiers have either been there before or are older rather than emerging. 'Everybody' goes on about all the Aussies that are coming through but how many qualified?

To say I was in shock reading the updates would be something of an understatement. It's a good job Roo and Ed had the easier round otherwise it would have been truly embarrassing. How would have they even scored a point in the other meetings?!! Who'd have thought James Wright would have been one of our last hopes? (that is actually a question)

Right, I've given myself plenty of time to digest the news. Rich out and Brendan in first. Clearly a change of necessity and I will quickly say best wishes to Rich. I hope the injury clears up quickly and you can get back on the bike after just a few weeks on the sidelines. On paper it's pretty much like-for-like although Brendan has a slightly higher average this season. But I'm not too sure it will turn out that way in the end. Rich has been very good just lately, and even his 6 last Tue doesn't really give credit to the performance. Monmore is not the easiest track for some riders to get to grips with and I've seen nothing from Brendan to suggest he can start scoring freely straight away. It's not his fault but he doesn't have the half a season you could afford a new rider, or a rider struggling for best form, at the start of a season. The season is half over and we need to build toward a big play-off push, starting right now! Something else that's not his fault is that I think signing him disrupts our team balance. Some of our boys have new averages, Brendan does not. With him in on his start average it means Darryl moves into the top 5. I would like to believe that our side was built with keeping him at reserve all season in mind. If not it should have been. All of that said I will support him, of course, as will the rest of the Heathen's faithful. So welcome Brendan. Get out there and prove me wrong! Danny out and Adam in. I've been trying to work this one out since I saw the news break the other day. Put simply I can't. Danny was starting to look a little better and was justifying his place by outscoring his average. I admit I don't know a great deal about Adam but I don't think he's been given the 'wonderkid' tag by too many people. Again, he'll get my support but I'm disappointed for Adam. With Armo suffering a bit of a loss of form, Kyle sometimes required elsewhere, Tom not consistently at his best and losing both Royno and Rich to injury I fear we may not be the threat we could otherwise have been. But we were a long time without our own team to support so win, lose or draw I'm sure the fans will turn out and enjoy the racing. And as long as everyone is giving it absolutely everything they've got they'll get the support from the crowd.

http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=64768&st=0

It probably does, and I'm sure he'll learn a hell of a lot if he's watching, listening and asking the right people the right questions when he gets a run out in the EL. I'll stress that my point was from an entirely selfish point of view. I do genuinely believe we'd have won with him, so it's frustrating. But them's the breaks. As a footnote I believe that there's a rule that states where the NL club pays a loan fee it has priority so I assume we're not paying a loan fee for Kyle. Just out of interest I wonder if anyone can clarify this?

How frustrating. Kyle has been superb for us and I would have to say that I believe he could have scored 10 or more last night which would have swung the meeting our way. I'm sure in the long run his EL experience will be good for him on a personal note. But the truth is it's a step too far at this stage of his career. With that in mind, and being entirely selfish, it's frustrating to watch him on Updates struggle for points when he could have been winning the meeting for us instead. Hey-ho, it is what it is. Congrats to KL on doing just enough. Results like this will continue to tighten up the league which is good for it.

Wow didn't see that coming. I'll need time to compute before commenting further.

I've been a Monmore regular for many years now and have seen Wolves' crowd rise and dip over the years. I would say that in the last couple of years their average crowd is pretty much at their average over the last 10 (and a bit) years. As near as makes little or no difference our average crowd is about the same as Wolves', except for the local derby with Cov when the crowd swells somewhat. Clearly, pulling in the punters in roughly the same numbers is going to mean running the Heathens club is likely to be profitable. However, we should not get too hung on purely in numbers through the gate. Each clubs has various sponsorship deals. I suspect we have very little sponsorship whereas Birmingham have a very impressive list of sponsors. Despite the Brummies having infinitely higher running costs in the EL it may well be that they are a profitable club too. It's very difficult to guess numbers in the crowds at a speedway meeting because the majority of us of no real frame of reference. The official figures are never published so it's all down to pure guess work. We were told that last season saw an average crowd around or just over (can't remember word-for-word what was said) 1,000. That's obviously very very healthy for NL as I often read that the NL, and even some PL, clubs ride in front of just a few hundred. It is certainly a factor that a significant number of fans simply refuse to acknowledge Dudley Heathens as their own because they don't race on their own track, the name is wrong and it's not top flight. Personally, I accept the Heathens as my team (though I never call them Dudley I should add) and am happy to see us at Monmore. It's better than not racing, it's a great race track that (as opposed to when we were racing as Cradley) provides good racing many more times than it fails to deliver and it's on my doorstep. Would it be feasible to race PL or EL? Hmm it's an interesting question. Personally I think there would be too many PL fixtures for it to be viable. The dogs are on Monday and Friday afternoon's and also on Thursday and Saturday evenings. Wolves race on a Monday with a Wednesday reserved (or it used to be) for worst case scenario fixture backlogs. So if we raced PL and were successful we would have a lot of fixtures and no plan B for any postponements or rearranged fixtures. There are less clubs in the EL so that might be more feasible. There are a couple of stumbling blocks to this though. There used to be a rule that a new club couldn't go straight into the EL. Whether we could circumnavigate this by calling ourselves a returning club rather than a new club would be open to debate, and the will of the MC. Running costs would be very high and it may not be possible to secure enough sponsorship from Black Country businesses for a club not racing in the region, though clearly just a few miles up the road. Finally, we would need to work closely with Wolves to secure some Monday fixtures for live Sky meetings. Where there's a will there's a way so that could be done but it wouldn't be easy as there are a finite number of Mondays.

I may add more comments tomorrow but my updates say it all really so for now I'll simply say congrats to Stoke and good luck in the final. Best wishes to Tim. I hope he just sat out his last ride because the tie was over as a contest so there was no need for him to risk anything silly.

I think you're suffering from the same misconceptions many have. 3D isn't all about things jumping off the screen. The whole point is to give a more realistic sense of depth. That's how our eyes work. We don't see things jumping out of the scenery at us. Well, not unless you've annoyed your wife and she's swinging a frying pan at your head!! ------------------------------- Just for the record - I don't have a 3D TV and obviously don't have the Sky 3D package. Both are too expensive at the moment. In particular I think the Sky 3D package is a rip off. Yet another £10/month for very little content.

Yes, I'll be there mate. I wouldn't worry if I were you. We could smuggle Herbie and Bullet in and still not rack up a 31 point win. I would rather get a wake-up call in a league meeting though. At least in the league there is time to recover, particularly in this era as just making the top four gives you a shot at being league champions. Screw in a straight knock-out competition and you're out on your ass. I wasn't there so the above doesn't refer to me but it's nice to read your comments Malcolm. I was rather hoping your boys were going to be complacent though so a bit gutted you're cottoned on to the fact that you're going for the win tonight as well. Nice try. If we could get 3 or their riders elbowed from the meeting we'd have a chance. The 180-hour (rather than 7 days) rule refers to guests rather than full time squad members, and the NL is exempt when riding on an EL or PL track as the riders may be riding in more than one league. Can you imagine a situation where a PL club couldn't track it's own riders because they rode in its own NL team the week (or less) before?

Nope! We didn't beat IOW by a big enough margin last week so we're not going to beat Stoke by enough. That's not being defeatest or not having faith in the boys etcetera, it's being realisitc. I'd settle for a comfortable win and every rider having a decent night and restoring some pride. 50 something would be very nice but I think that's out of reach. 49-41 ish

From the link posted above. "Speedway meetings cannot start without a qualified paramedic or doctor and the paramedic did not arrive. It seemed the paramedic had not been notified of the meeting or start time. "It's not for me to say if there will be any repercussions, that's for the Speedway Control Board to sort out." Oh dear, what an embarrasment for the club and based on those comments I would suggest the ref's meeting report is likely to reflect his displeasure as he acknowledges there could be further action. I doubt he'd have said that if he felt the club were not at significant fault here. And what an embarrassment for the Heathens too. Slick and dry, deep and grippy or wet and slippery that's a shocking result by what is a very competitive team. That said I have repeatedly pointed out what a threat I think Stoke can be this season. I'm rather annoyed they chose to prove me right against my own club though!! Congrats Stoke. That's a cracking result for your lot. There's no way we can turn this one around but I'll be looking for all of our riders to restore some pride and make the aggregate score more respectable in the return fixture tomorrow.